The brutal murder of a transgender woman has prompted almost every news organization that reported on the murder to blame the victim, publish her arrest record, and repeatedly label her as a man. The murder was a heinous crime, the misgender identification by news organizations who have not taken the time to learn how to report on issues related to transgender people is offensive.

Also very disturbing is the fact that no report would lead readers to believe the police are working diligently to find the murderer. Not one report stated police are asking for assistance or seeking help in finding her killer.

The victim, Cemia Acoff, whom every outlet incorrectly named “Carl Acoff,” was a 20-year old transgender woman found brutally murdered — her body dumped into a pond in a Cleveland, Ohio suburb after having been stabbed, tied with rope, and “attached to a block of concrete,” reports state.

But all the reports identify Acoff as a man or male, ignore the AP Style book’s and GLAAD’s information on how to report on transgender crime victims, and perhaps worst of all, treat the victim as a criminal, dehumanize her, and make inappropriate or offensive references to her and her body. One report even referred to her body as “it.”

News reports from local ABC affiliate NewsNet5.com, local Fox affiliate Fox 8, an Associated Press (AP) report in the Times Leader and elsewhere, a report as far away as Tucson, Arizona’s KOLD/KMSB, and two reports in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer all chose to identify the murder victim as male, not as a transgender woman.

Not one report used the word “transgender” or identified the murder victim as a transgender woman. Not one report stated any attempts were made to contact the victim’s family, much less include a quote from a family member, friend, or neighbor.

One outlet even found it appropriate to publish her entire arrest record, as if that were pertinent to the story.

At TransGriot, Monica Roberts calls the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s articles “transphobic,” a “journalistic hate crime,” and adds, “this is the worst piece of alleged reporting on a trans murder I’ve seen in a while.”

Roberts writes:

Misgender the person at every opportunity? Check

Use police mugshot? Check

Drag old criminal record into the story? Check

‘Deception meme’ injected into story? Check

‘Tragic transsexual’ meme injected into this story? Check

Use salacious and sensationalist headlines? Check

Not give a rats anus about the victim’s dignity and their femme presentation? Check

As of 3:05 PM, the Plain Dealer has updated its two stories to remove pronouns (except in the case of that one headline) and a few of the more sensationalized aspects of the stories. However, many problems remain.

Describing Acoff as “oddly dressed” is incredibly insulting.

Her murder did not “end her fight for acceptance,” it ended her life. Period.

There is no need to describe what she was wearing at the time of her murder; she had already been identified at the start of both stories, describing her wardrobe only trivializes her murder.

Acoff’s criminal record is almost certainly irrelevant to the story, especially when provided without any context concerning the trans community and law enforcement.

And removing pronouns doesn’t fix much. Yes, the stories are no longer factually incorrect, but this tact still shows an unwillingness to respect the victim’s gender identity and accept her as female.

The truth is, when someone like Cemia appears to identify as female sometimes and male other times, it’s because it’s still socially unacceptable (and often dangerous) to be transgender. The fact that some people in Acoff’s life didn’t know she sometimes identified as female, and the fact that her legal identification might not have reflected her gender identity, doesn’t change the fact that she was a transgender woman.

We shared with the Cleveland Plain Dealer our guide to reporting on transgender victims of crime, and have informed them of the issues that still remain with those two stories. We have also asked the Cleveland Plain Dealer to meet with local transgender advocates and community members, to better understand the sensitivity that was missing from its reporting, the way both the New York Times and Los Angeles Times did following similarly insensitive stories.

The [Cleveland Plain Dealer] journalist knew that Acoff was a trans woman because he reported that fact, yet he chose to not only mis-gender her, but he refers to her body as an “it”. Corpses are generally referred to in the press as male or female, depending on the apparent anatomy or the determination made in the source police report.

Even mis-gendering the body would have been better than applying the dehumanizing “it”.

Cemia Acoff’s murder was brutal. The reporting that followed it was, at best, undignified. But it does not stop there.

“This sensationalism will not be tolerated. The issue is bigger than the Cleveland Plain Dealer. It is not about a single, horrible act of violence. This is about how people treat one another. It is no surprise that Cemia Acoff’s death was treated with disrespect. The trans community is repeatedly marginalized in every aspect of daily life: in the workplace, in the healthcare community, in the press and everywhere. It has to stop.” Shane Morgan, Founder & Chair of TransOhio.

Someone thought that Cemia’s body was ‘a mannequin.’ We cannot escape the scarring analogy to Matthew Shephard’s body being mistaken for a scarecrow in 1998.

First, sadness and anger that Cemia Acoff was murdered, apparently brutally, and treated by both her murder(s) and the press in such an inhumane manner. Second, we hope the press uses this as a learning experience and actually works hard to make the changes necessary to report properly, and with the compassion that the life of a transgender person is equal to that of any other person. Lastly, we hope that violence against transgender will stop, and while we recognize that day may be far away, we hope that the press and law enforcement will stop giving cover to — by improperly and insufficiently reporting and improperly and insufficiently investigating and prosecuting — all those who inflict violence against transgender people.

And here's what The Task Force had to say concerning African American trans women, who along with trans Latinas are taking the brunt of the anti-trans hate violence you are you TERF's help grease the skids for with your hate screeds.http://www.thetaskforce.org/downloads/reports/rep…